sacraments to give unto the people," it may be well to show, that, however deficient we may be thought by any in our arguments, we come not behind the very chiefest in the confident assertion of our apostolicity both in our ministerial and in our doctrinal succession. We will therefore present to our readers some specimens of the manner in which presbyterians, both ancient and modern, have been wont to represent their claims. And first, as it regards the Culdees, that noble fountain of gospel truth and order.

2

'Bede,' says Dr. Jamieson, 'gives an extract of a letter from Laurence, who succeeded Augustine as Bishop of Canterbury, A. D. 605, to the Scots who inhabited Ireland, in which he says: 'Bishop Dagan, coming to us, not only refused to eat with us, but even to take his repast in the same house in which we were entertained.' This Dagan, it is said, came from the monastery of Bangor, in Ireland, to be bishop to the Scots. It is evident that he treated the votaries of Rome, not excepting the bishop of Canterbury himself, as if they had been actually excommunicated. He viewed them as men with whom he was not so much as to eat; nay, as even communicating pollution to the place where they did eat.' 'It is evident, that this pertinacity of the Culdees greatly piqued the Romanists, who deemed it the highest presumption, in men living in such distant regions, to pretend in any thing to differ from those who pleaded the transmission of the Keys from the apostle Peter.'

Express mention is made of these Culdees in the second council of Cabilon, or Chalons, A. D. 813. "There are,' it is said in their acts, 'in certain places Scots, who call themselves bishops, and contemning many, without the license of their lords or superiors, ordain presbyters and deacons.' Cummian, in the seventh century, who was induced to conform to the Romish church, upbraids the Culdees with dissenting from other churches, and tells them it was heretical pravity to affirm that Rome erred and that Britons alone were wise. Oswald, prince of Northumberland, who had received baptism among the Irish, sent to Hy for a Culdee bishop, taking no notice of Paulinus, the Romish bishop at York, nor of James, the deacon, his companion.*

Clemens, a Scot, in the eighth century, who was given over to the secular power and devoted to the flames, on the ground

1) Oxf. Tr. vol. i. p. 44.

2) See Hist. Acc. of the Ancient Culdees, Edinb. 1811, 4to. p. 221-226.

3) Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 109.

4) Ibid, p. 109.

of his opposition to the authority claimed by the Romish church, among other things, 'did reprove Boniface, that he did so advance the authority of the Roman bishop, seeing all teachers are equally successors of the apostles."1

Nor could any thing induce the Culdees to conform to the Romish church. They chose rather to forfeit their church and property than desert their principles, and thus allowed themselves to be expelled from all their ancient seats, until they were gradually lost among the growing multitude of Romanized christians.2

To this remarkable testimony of the Culdees may be added that of the Waldenses and the Albigenses, of whom we are informed, that, amid all their bloody and ferocious persecutions, whatever names of reproach might be heaped upon them by their enemies, they would acknowledge no appellation save that of 'apostolical,' inasmuch as they claimed to be the uncorrupted successors and followers of St. Paul and the other apostles.3 They testified with their blood, that 'the polity of the church of Rome was neither good nor holy, nor established by Jesus Christ,' and that 'archbishops, bishops, and other prelates ordained by the church of Rome, were not true."

The same claims are put forth by all the churches of the reformation, which in their confession harmonize in representing their ministry-which was that of presbyters—as of divine institution, as apostolical, and as no new appointment, but 'most ancient, and from God himself."

Calvin thus speaks: 'Whereas I have indiscriminately called those who govern the churches, bishops, presbyters, and pastors, I have done so according to the usage of scripture.

whoever executes the office of ministers of the gospel, to them the scriptures give the title of bishops." He thus teaches, that 'there is one episcopacy which is Christ's alone, whereof every minister of the gospel has an entire and equal share.'

In his response to the work of Hadrian Saravia, in defence of the hierarchy, Beza, alluding to his own tract, ‘De Triplici

1) Hoinbar Annal. lib. 3, &c., in Jamieson's History of the Culdees, p. 237.

2) See Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 112.

3) See Faber's Albigenses, p. 195, Blair's Waldenses.

4) Allix, on the Anc. Ch. of the Albig. p. 177, 178.

5) See quoted in B. 2, ch. iii.
6) See Comment. on Titus 1, 5.

See also Instit. B. 4, ch. 3, § 8. Comment. on Phil. 1: 1, and Inst. Lib. 4, cap. 4, 513 and 14, and on Eph. 4: 11. For a complete collection of all the passages from Calvin, bearing on this subject, and a refutation of the ignorant and wilful misrepresentations of his sentiments, see Dr. Miller on the Ministry. 2d ed. Part ii. Letter vi.

Episcopatu,' or the triple Episcopacy, thus speaks. 'Let those who will go now and wonder, that a triple episcopate should be constituted by us; one, namely, that which is evidently divine, constituted by the apostles, and which we desire to be restored, another human, by which an order (or matter of arrangement) was imperceptibly changed into a grade, (or distinct rank,) which may truly be enjoyed by those who are persuaded, that the right use of it can be renewed and maintained; a third, oligarchical and tyrannical, nay, even satanic, which is both to be abominated in the manifestly anti-christian despotism of Rome, and to be reformed from the word of God, in the still remaining oligarchical domination of episcopacy."1

This very claim to superiority, on the ground of a more undoubted apostolicity in their views of ministerial order and succession, was the foundation of all the puritan arguments. It was for maintaining, that the Church of England had declined from the ancient and apostolic church, that he wished it brought back to a purer model, and that bishops and presbyters were, in scripture, one and the same office-that Cartwright, in 1570, was expelled from his office in college by Archbishop Whitgift, who found it much easier to drive him from his home and friends, than to overcome the resistless force of his argumentation.2

Thus also Axton, in his examination before the bishop of Litchfield, in 1567, when asked why he did not consider him to be a lawful bishop, answered.3 'For three causes especially : the first is, for that you are not ordained a bishop by the consent of the eldership. The second, because you are not ordained to be a bishop over any one flock, for you say you are a bishop over the whole diocese, and then you are a bishop over many flocks; and yet you do not think that you are bishop (that is, pastor) over any of these congregations. The third, because you are not chosen to be a governor in the church of God by the election of the people.'

The church of Scotland laid the very basis of her reformation, in the deep scriptural principles of ministerial parity and presbyterial episcopacy. She resisted any conformity or subjection to the English hierachy, through a century of alter

1) Respons. and Sarav. 177, quoted in orig. in Plea for Presb. p. 124.

2) See a Life of Cartwright, prefixed to Hanbury's ed. of Hooker, vol. i. p. cxxxvii. and Price's Hist. of Prof. Nonconf. vol. i. pp. 217,

3) See in Life of Cartwright, p. 213, and see also Smith's Reply, in 1567, in do. p. 207.

4) See this fully shown by Professor Jamieson, in his Nazianzeni Quezela Glasgow, 1697, pt. i. ch. 7, and p. 219.

nate triumph and defeat, of bloodshed, suffering, and death. She always thought herself superior to that church, in being presbyterian and not prelatic in her government; in the completeness and perfection of her reformation; and in the piety, devotion, and pastoral character of her clergy.1 In the debate which her divines held with King Charles, they insisted that presbytery was de jure divino, by divine appointment. Such also was the decision of the Westminster Assembly of divines, until, by the growing power and tumult of the Erastian party, it was decided, that presbyterianism was merely lawful. When parliament imposed the oath which contained a clause to endeavor the extirpation of prelacy, many of the members of this assembly, among whom were Dr. Burgess, and Mr. Gataker, refused to take it, lest they should seem to condemn all episcopacy. The language, therefore, was modified so as to define the human inventions of the prelacy in contradistinction to the primitive episcopacy. In an answer to the questions of the parliament touching jus divinum, published in 1646, it is said, 'our ministers are descended from the apostles whom Christ ordained to preach, and they were sent to all nations to convert men to the christian faith, and they also ordained elders in every church in every city or town, and after them they left others in their places to do it. Tit. 1: 5. And thus church officers were ordained by them of their own calling, successively, ever since." The position taken by the provincial assembly of London, which, after the dissolution of the Westminster Assembly, was regarded as the organ of the presbyterian body, may be seen at full length in their two famous and incomparable treatises, "The Divine Right of Church Government," and "The Divine Right of the Gospel ministry." Indeed, the whole force of the presbyterian body, in those troublous times, was employed in defending their own ministry, and that of the previously existing hierarchy, against the charge of anti-christianism and nullity, so furiously levelled against them by the congregationalists of the

6) Jus Divinum Regiminiis Ecclesiastici, or the Divine Right, &c., asserted and evidenced by the Holy Scriptures; I have the third edition, London, 1654, 4to. See pp. 14, 27, 32, 102, 267, 268.

7) Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici, or, &c., London, 1654. See Introd. pp. 3, 26, and pt. 2, pp. 2, 16, 17, 19, 22, 24, 33, 38, &c. These two works would be well worth republication by our Board.

Cromwell school. And the only question which excited any serious controversy then, was, not whether the ministerial succession of the presbyterians had come down to them unbroken from the apostles, but whether it had not become altogether polluted and destroyed, by descending through the foul channel's of the prelacy.2 'By all which it appeareth,' to use the words of Baxter, 1. 'how falsely we are charged to be against all episcopacy. 2. how falsely and deceitfully all those writers state the case, who . . . . make them believe that our controversy is, whether there should be any episcopacy, and not what kind of episcopacy it should be." Not less pointed are the words of Mr. Boyse, who says, 'how strange and unaccountable it is, then, to find the generality of those who write on this subject, so constantly confounding the parochial with diocesan episcopacy, as if it were the same thing, when the latter is so utterly inconsistent with the former, and so entirely subversive of it; and if this primitive parochial episcopacy be all that is contended for, I think the dispute about the divine right of it may be laid aside'. . . . 'since we could rejoice in the restoration of this ancient parochial or congregational episcopacy." 'For parochial episcopacy we do entirely own the divine right of it," 'and it is utterly untrue, that either the dissenters, or any of the reformed church, either censure or want parochial episcopacy." Milton, in like manner, styles one of his treatises 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' in which he shows that presbyters are true bishops." In his work 'Of Reformation in England,' he says, 'it,' the presbyterian discipline, 'is but episcopacy reduced to what it should be; were it not that the tyranny of prelates, under the name of bishops, had made our ears tender, and startling, we might call every good minister a bishop, as every bishop, yea, the apostles themselves are called ministers, and the angels ministering spirits, and the ministers again angels."

It may therefore be affirmed, that the reformers and presbyterian divines generally, both thought and taught, that the scriptural episcopacy was presbyterian parity; and that, when

1) The soberest terms then usually applied to them, were 'Baal's Priests,' 'Anti-christian priests,' 'Black coats,' &c., see Firmin's Separation Examined, p. 92. Byfield on the Church of Christ. Vindicia Viniciarum, and the works above referred to.

2) See Div. Right of the Ministry, pt. 2, pp. 29, 42.

3) Treatise on Episcop. ch. iv. § 80, 81, pp. 43, 44.

4) Account of the Ancient Episcopacy, pref. pp. x. xi., Lond. 1712, and in Wks. Fol. Lond. 1728.

5) Ibid, p. 209.

6) Ibid, p. 287.

7) Wks. vol. 1, pp. 60, 64, &c. 8) Wks. vol. 1, p. 52.

9) See prose Wks. vol. 1, p. 52.